ISI's new favourites! Move over Dawood, Indian Mujahideen is the new A-Team with a side order of Lashkar

About two kilometres from Dawood Ibrahim's new house in Karachi is Phase VI residential area of the Defence Housing Authority. The area houses the makeshift overseas base of the Indian Mujahideen, the new company - read terror outfit - carved out by Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) for covert operations in India.

The Indian Mujahideen is Pakistan's new B-team, a place it has earned with its repeated and ruthless terror strikes in India, and replaced the dreaded D-company in Pakistan's scheme of things.

The Dilsukhnagar blasts in Hyderabad, that killed 16 people and injured over 100, proved what the new group is capable of. The attack also revealed with chilling effect that the plan had been to wreak greater damage by planting the bombs at the Shirdi Sai Baba temple nearby. The bombers failed to do that. Had they been successful, many more would have died in last week's attack. It is natural that IM's Pakistani masters should be indulgent towards them.

The new company has been named the Indian Mujahideen for tactical reasons by ISI ringleaders to camouflage its Pak connections. Reports of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) say that the sole objective of giving such an organisation an Indian tag is to tarnish the image of Indian Muslims and drive a wedge between Hindus and Muslims.

This is also what the D-company did with the 1993 serial blasts and subsequent acts of violence.

New company

IM's rise as a terror organisation has been quick. After 2008, when the IB and the police launched a crackdown on IM's Delhi module, its founder brothers Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal escaped to Karachi from Sharjah. By 2013, IM's several key operatives were rechristened with new aliases and identities and sheltered in different parts of localities adjoining DHA schemes in Karachi.

In short, while the surname has changed, ISI's hate-India story remains the same. Instead of the Ibrahims they now have the Bhatkals.

Instead of depending on the ageing D-company, the spymasters now rely on the young and ruthless IM, and have made it the B-team after the Lashkar-e-Toiba IM's incorporation into the terror network masterminded by Pakistan has followed a familiar route to the D-company. Twenty years back, after the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, ISI agent Taufiq Jaliawala and Syed Arif flew with Dawood Ibrahim on a PIA flight from Dubai to Karachi.

Jaliawala introduced Dawood to ISI handlers and the don was rewarded with all government amenities, including security.

Dawood and his henchmen, including brother Anees and Lieutenant Chhota Shakeel, were sheltered at a guesthouse and later shifted to a palatial bungalow in the posh Clifton area.

Subsequently the gang members split in different sectors of DHA in Karachi. Dawood bought another house located at 6/A, Phase V, DHA.

"Since the last couple of years Dawood has been having serious health problems. His younger brother Anees is into large-scale property business in Pakistan whereas Chhota Shakeel has already made a fortune out of his career of crime over two decades.D-company is now more into corporate business rather than terror crimes," says a senior official of Maharashtra police's Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS).

For years ISI used D-company's pan-India network for logistics in its covert operations. On ISI's radar, the financial hubs of Mumbai and Bangalore emerged as prime targets. "The plan was so vicious that the underworld syndicates in the subcontinent split on communal lines. And the lines between terrorism and underworld blurred.

In time, ISI later realised that Dcompany was losing its teeth so they started looking out for another entity to carry out its hate agenda," says a top IB official.

The game plan did not change despite pressure from an India friendly US regime.

Only, a terror outfit with an Indian tag emerged. During the tenure of former ISI chief Lt.-Gen Taj Nadeem, the agents in India had successfully regrouped some SIMI cadres and linked them with LeT handlers in Pakistan for arms training. The D-company originates from Maharashtra's Ratnagiri, Dawood's native village and later set up business in Mumbai. It subsequently operated out of Dubai in the early 1990s and finally housed itself in Karachi. The route for IM too is similar. Just over 450km from Ratnagiri is Bhatkal in Karnataka, where Ikbal and Riyaz hail from. After coming in contact with ISI operatives, they took refuge in Sharjah and later shifted base to Karachi.

Okhla

Interestingly before leaving the country, the IM commanders had been operating from Okhla's Shaheen Bagh area, just 500 metres from Sarita Vihar in Delhi where the present headquarters of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) are located.

In his disclosure, Tarique, an IM terrorist, revealed that in 2008 Iqbal, Riyaz and Yasin Bhatkal - the India chief of IM - stayed at D-76/1 Shaheen Bagh. It has been said that Yasin, during his stay, got in touch with a person named Irshad and later married his daughter. Subsequently after executing several bombings in different metros of India, Yasin returned to stay with his wife in D-5/1 Shaheen Bagh Okhla, New Delhi. After the serial blasts in Hyderabad, the focus of India's counter-terror agencies is once again on ISI's new company and its new boss, Yasin, who has taken over the reins of IM.